Science Fiction Though the Decades

Monday, July 21, 2014

The Alien
trilogy—by the end of 1993—ends with the appropriate but rather generically
titled Alien 3. Though now technically a quadrilogy with Alien: Resurrection, I've always viewed the fourth installment as an afterthought,
sort of a cheap addition to otherwise semi-tidy trilogy. (Side note: the
novelization of Alien: Resurrection was written by a different writer—the
late A.C. Crispin.) It was also subject to much interference even after the
final shot was taken. Foster himself wouldn’t even touch the novelization
because of the amount of flak he caught from trying to pen the proper version
of Alien 3.

So, casting
off Alien: Resurrection and returning to the main trilogy, I have the
same one-of-these-is-not-like-the-others feeling: Alien 3 feels forced,
like the screenwriters had an idea off the shelf and they had to sledgehammer
the duology into fitting the mold of their idea. What could be such a fantastic
idea: aliens run amok in an abandoned refinery where prisoners reside (yea,
yea, Ripley will fit in there somehow). Now, while the idea is half-assed and
the movie is a half-hearted attempt, the actual production of the novel came
off alright... just alright. Foster has said that his hand was forced in its
production so that it comes out just as the movie did, without any dramatic
changes (not
exactly true).

I read the
Omnibus edition (Warner, 1993), so the page numbers may differ from the cover
featured (Titan Books, 2014).

Movie
tagline:

“This time
it's hiding in the most terrifying place of all.”

------------

Hicks, Ripley
and Newt, secure in their sleep pods, fling through space after meeting untold
horrors on Achernon; Bishop sits idle, deactivated, having been torn to pieces
by the alien queen who stowed away to reach the Sulaco. But not all is
silent aboard the Sulaco: At least two facehuggers creep in its systems,
one a curious predator intent on attacking Newt in her sleep pod. With its
immense strength, it tries to pry open the glass-topped pod, only to shatter
its rim and impale itself, thus causing it to spray acid blood. The acid
immediately eats through the room’s floor while building up a lethal amounts of
explosive gas and electrical fires. The Sulaco realizes the emergency
and evacuates the four sleep pods from the ship, which explodes soon after the
four pods are well away.

On the harsh
but survivable surface of the planet Fury 361 (or Fury 161 in the film and in
the novelization’s dialogue), a once functional refinery cum prison is home to
“two jailers, twenty-five prisoners” (484). The company has sent the worst of
the worst of their prisoners to this backwater planet so that they can maintain
the refinery equipment. For their simple work, the Company sends them token
supply runs for want of one day opening the refinery for full production in
case the planets metals can once again be exploited. Meanwhile, one of the
prisoners—Clemens—, yet also its head medic (once being a doctor but his crimes
had had him demoted), is out on a coastal stroll when a meteoric event catches
his attention. The descending trail of fire plunges into the sea near him,
where he sees the ejected sleep pods of four individuals; alone on the beach,
he saves Ripley first.

The
twenty-five prisoners are all “double Y chromos—former career criminals,
thieves, rapists, murders, arsonists … scum” (503). The all-male population of
the prison is intrinsically controlled by their self-formed religion, “some sort
of millenarian apocalyptic Christian fundamentalist brew” (521) which helps
them maintain discipline amid their isolation. Dillon is the authority figure
among the prisoners and also acts as the chaplain of their religion, in which
he leads prayer that relates to the coming of times and the escape from worldly
drudgery. Though they are complacent and conforming to their humble,
planet-bound existence at the refinery, theirs is a fragile environment in
which even a single female presence can shake their faith, upsetting the
equilibrium of placidness and angst. Welcome to Hell, Ripley.

Expectedly,
her presence is unwelcome. She bonds with the medic named Clemens who urges her
to remain in the infirmary, away from the prison population. Andrews, the
jailer supervisor, is adamant about the separation of sex, but Ripley’s
stubbornness proves inimical to his direction as she mingles with the edgy
prisoners. Her title of lieutenant instills the men with a smidgen of respect
and fear, but soon their hormones gain the upper hand when they try to take
advantage of her solitary visit to the refinery’s dump in order to retrieve the
discombobulated remains of Bishop. Dillon, the authoritative yet straight-laced
leader of the prisoners, saves her from a more disrespectable fate among the
attempted rapists.

Ripley’s trip
to the trash heap was impelled by Clemens’ description of her arrival and the
deaths of both Hicks and Newt. Her curiosity is piqued by two threads of her
situation: (1) First, as Ripley connects Bishop to the escape pods flight
recorder, she learns of the fate of the Sulaco and the Company’s
constant awareness of all events which took place on the ship; (2) Lastly, the
Company’s non-committal behavior toward the prison’s communication with them—“message received” (479 and 605)—and
their oddly dissociative message “PERMISSION DENIED TO TERMINATE XENOMORPH.
AVOID CONTACT UNTIL RESCUE TEAM ARRIVES” (606).

The presence
of the xenomorph at the prison/refinery comes as little surprise to Ripley. A
series of unfortunate deaths in the prison/refinery led up to her surmising
that an alien is alive in the vents, that its stalking them, that it wants only
two things: their deaths and its survival; after all, “that’s what it’s
designed to do: kill and multiply” (620). Having experienced the horror of
battling the aliens twice before, Ripley has almost become immune to fright;
rather, she is tormented by “her inability to forget” (568).

With the
assistance of the prisoners, Ripley is able to plan a chase and bait scenario
where they capture and isolate the alien. While it may safely remain behind
nearly impenetrable doors, the mind of man is an untethered ball of whim,
especially for those with minds struck with horror, such as Golic, who becomes
obsessed with the vision of the Beast and seeks spiritual communication with
its apocalyptic aura. Though he had always been considered the most peculiar
among the atypical prisons, his presence had always been tolerated at best;
now, with delusion visions of the apocalypse, his innocent whims of spirit
endanger everyone. He sees himself as immune to the Beast’s rage, much like
Ripley soon sees herself as privileged in commune with the alien, but for a
very different reason; she scans herself in the autodoc and discovers a long-term
affliction which has only began to display its twin symptoms of internal pain
and external invulnerability.

As they fight
the alien and flee from its stealth attacks, the prisoners’ hope rests on the
arrival of the Company, only hours away.

------------

There are
four common threads which tie the trilogy together, three threads of which are forgone
expectations: (1) Ripley, (2) the xenomorphs, (3) terror, and (4) grungy
locations. I understand that isolated and grubby locations heighten the sense
of unease, but it does become a tad repetitive: dingy space tug from Alien
and an unkempt space colony from Aliens. The third part of the trilogy
offers a twofer: neglected prison/refinery. At this point in the Alien series,
one begins to wonder if the screenwriters have any imagination left, if anyone
cares to break the mold, if anyone has any vision for the series. The movie Alien
3 earns a paltry 3/5 in my book for this lack of imagination and drudgery.

While the
plot of this sequel, and its accompanying novelization, feel forced in contrast
to Alien and Aliens, Foster overcomes this slipshod story with gusto
for plot pacing. The atmosphere is always tense, be it when a prisoner is
decapitated or when Ripley queries Clemens about her arrival. There’s an
electric sense of foreboding, an eerie static which permeates the novelization—something
more than the movie did. Foster has some obvious skill in this regard, to
somehow make a novelization more tense than the movie. This, in turn, results in
a more impressive 4/5.

One tactic
Foster utilizes is the use of investigation by the characters; they know
something isn’t right in their banal prison/refinery, but after Ripley shows
up, things become a bit peculiar: a large insectoid is discovered (an unusually
large facehugger), a slimy cowl is discarded in an air duct (from the queen’s
molting?), and a hollow, oblong black skull is found (again, from molting?).
Much like in Aliens, the plot takes the reader through the species
building of the xenomorphs—quite similar to character building.

------------

Thankfully,
this is a trilogy. At this point, the rehash of Ripley, xenomorphs, terror and
grimy locations has reached the end of its steam. Alien: Resurrection is
a movie time has forgotten (except for that exceptionally creepy alien/human
hybrid). There have been many other novels published in the same Alien
Universe, most recently is the Out of the Shadows series by Tim Lebbon,
which somehow—in a curious why-was-this-needed way—fills a gap between Alien
and Aliens. If Alien 3 is considered cursory to the series, Out
of the Shadows (2014) can be considered extraneous, superfluous, unwanted
and unneeded.

Thursday, July 17, 2014

The
Alien series blends science fiction wonder with the terror of being
stalked—lions, tigers and bears are for children. The xenomorph in
the series epitomizes our most basic fears: it’s dark, unctuous,
and scaly. On top of this, the xenomorph can’t be reasoned with,
can’t be stared in the eye, and can’t be intimidated.

The
movie’ sequel—Aliens—,and its novelization, develop the
xenomorph a lot more… thereby making it even scarier: how it
breeds, where it prefers to nest, how the hive is structured… all
but the purpose of the xenomorph. If you thought the unknown was
terrible… think again.

I read the Omnibus edition (Warner, 1993), so the page numbers may differ from the cover featured (Titan Books, 2014).

Movie
tagline:

“This time it's war.”

------------

Ripley
and Jones drift blindly while in cryo-sleep. After fifty-seven years
away from the horror of the Nostromos,
her sleeping figure is still haunted by the loss of her crewmates and
the impossible terror which stalked them. She’s rescued by a
passing ship and taken back to Earth orbit—Gateway Station—where
she meets Carter Burke, a representative of the Corporation.
Predictably, he’s most concerned about the loss of the Nostromos
and its cargo, something which Ripley has an understandably difficult
time accepting. After a short convalescence, she appears at an
inquest where she tells her story, of which they are very skeptical
of. Ripley, of course, becomes emotional and curses their intention.
In the end, they simply revoke her pilot license due to mental
instability.

Meanwhile,
on Achernon, a colonists is dispatched by the Company is investigate
a previously “unexplored” region on the planet. There, the family
discovers a giant alien ship. While mom and dad are out scavenging
the relic, Newt and her brother make due in the transport… until
her mom bursts through the door and her father slung to the floor
with an abomination latched on to his face.

Ripley
continues to live her life with the knowledge that her only daughter
had died some years ago at an advanced age. She is working as a dock
operator and maintaining a quiet life at home with her cat Jones,
when an unwelcome visitor comes to her door with an even more
unwelcome offer: join a platoon of space marines for a search and
rescue mission on the godforsaken, bootstrap colony of Achernon, on
the same dustball she and her tug found the alien. She would act as a
consultant because of her knowledge of the aliens, but the Company is
straightforward about their task: investigate the colonists and go in
shooting if any aliens are found. Very reluctantly, with the promise
of receiving her pilot’s license back, she leave her cat with the
troop aboard the Sulaco.

Along
with the twelve marines, Bishop is a “synthetic” whose primary
role on the mission is the executive officer. Because he’s an
android, Ripley is initially defensive because of her experience with
Ash on the Nostromos,
whose actions killed the entire crew save herself. The commanding
officer, Gorman, seems to be an unskilled lackey who somehow became
in control of this dangerous yet important mission. Hicks is one of
the other marines whose calm demeanor and general niceness endears
him to Ripley. Though she may be unknowingly walking into a hive full
of aliens, at least she has someone to watch her back… one with a
pulse rifle and a shotgun (the best kind of friend!).

With the
marines on the ground and in the colony, two things quickly become
apparent: (1) no one is left alive and (2) there was a major holdout
and battle around the infirmary. The mayhem of the colony offers a
surprise of one survivor, a solitary girl who had been living in the
air ducts, of which she knows so well. Ripley treats her like a
long-departed child of her own while the marines search for the
colonists, who seem to be amassed to the atmosphere exchange tower
where the fusion reactor continually cleans the atmosphere for
terraforming.

When a
small exploratory unit descend to Level-C of the tower, they
encounter bizarre organic additions to the facility. They are
perplexed how or why the colonists would construct such additions,
until they realize that the colonists probably aren’t
responsible—they see gutted remains and bodies pinned to the walls,
where one utters, “Please—kill me” (333). Behind them, a alien
stirs. The marines torch the pained bodies and engage the aliens.
Being so close to the reactor, they are commanded to resort to
flamethrowers, but the knavish smartgun operators clip in and spray
the level with gunfire, resulting in the death of a few aliens and
piercing some vital systems.

Ripley
demands their retreat, but the inexperienced and reticent commander
Gorman refuses, to which Ripley asserts her strong character and
leads the retreat for the marines. While racing from the scene,
aliens attack the armored transport, tearing off alloyed
reinforcement like stickers from a child’s coloring book. Gorman is
incapacitated by the tail-sting of an alien while Ripley makes showy
exit by running over an alien, its acidic blood splattering the
pavement and pocking the wheels.

Back in
the main complex, Bishop studies the dead facehuggers while two of
the monstrosities remain in stasis in the infirmary. As Ripley and
marines retreat to the main colony, they begin to evacuate the
compound but the atmospheric craft is attacked and destroyed by an
alien, making them withdraw into the complex again in order to mount
defenses in expectation of an alien offense. They establish autoguns
at the main subterranean thoroughfare, a blockade which kills hoards
of the marauding ebon hunters.

After a
particularly selfish and cowardly act by the now revived Gorman,
Bishop and Ripley conceive of a plan for their rescue: for Bishop to
guide the last atmospheric craft from the Sulaco
down to the surface, where it can pick them up and take them to the
safety of orbit. There only remain two limits: (1) Ripley must rescue
Newt from the aliens’ nest and (2) the reactor is about to go
critical. Choice: slow death by playing host to an alien chestbuster
OR quick death by nuclear meltdown?

------------

Even
before I begin my watered-down synopsis, I digress: terror or horror?
The word “terror” is derived from a Latin
word which means
“to frighten”; the word “horror” is also derived from a Latin
word, but its
meaning is “to tremble”.

Some
common words used in association with definitions of “terror”
include intense fear, panic, and dread. Common associations with
“horror”, rather, include abhorrence, shocking, and fearful. So,
to revert to an SAT tactic:

If
terror
is to fear;
then horror
is to shock.

If
fear is
to reaction;
then shock
is to inaction.

If
reaction is
to survival;
then inaction
is to death.

From
this diminished separation of the two words—terror and horror—we
can analyze the actions, reactions, and emotions of the characters in
a story to see if (a) they are simply scared and plan action against
its source or (b) they witness grotesque abominations resulting in
non-logical action toward its source. Do the characters in Alien and
Aliens react logically or illogically? Do Alien and Aliens induce
terror or horror? Is the series a work of terror or a work of horror?

Considering
the protagonist Ripley and her persistent rate of survival through
the series, she seems to act logically while being able to coordinate
both offensive and defensive tactics and she’s able to analyze her
enemy. Thus, Ripley fights terror through the series; she stalks,
attacks, retreats, recuperates, attacks again, and escapes. These are
not symptoms of shock, so it is not a work of horror (the same cannot
be said for parts of Alien 3, however).

You can
only blame Ripley for putting herself into the terror she experiences
yet controls. While circumstances in Alien may have been beyond her
initial control (what with the hidden agenda of the Company and Ash’s
tampering), but Ripley was either desperate, naïve or depressed for
her to accept a mission to the same planet where the crew of Nostromo
first found the facehuggers.

What did
she honestly expect from the stingy, conniving Company?

(A)
trophy for her consultation

(B)
reassuring words for her good attitude

(C)
generous bonus for her assistance

(D)
free Jam of the Month membership

(E)
knife in the back

Both the
Company (care of Burke) and the Space Marines (care of Gorman) are
unable to assess the danger they are in and are unable to assess the
inhuman enemy; only Ripley has a basic understanding of the aliens’
motivations, methods of attack, and tenaciousness. When the Marines
get destroyed and demoralized, Ripley takes charge; when the Company
is overwhelmed and dumbfounded, Ripley leads the way. Amid the
carnage, the now daughter-less Ripley seeks emotional shelter in the
form of Newt, the motherless orphan. She has more forms of hope than
either the synthetic yet trustworthy Bishop or the gallant yet
wounded Hicks.

The one
aspect of Aliens which is most appreciated—by me and others, I
presume—is the development of the alien as a species rather than
just a solitary killing machine. The reader begins to understand its
lifecycle, basic social structure, limits, strengths, weaknesses, and
even composition.

This is
a novelization, so comparisons must be drawn between the book and the
movie. Perhaps it’s my faulty memory, but I don’t remember the
movie having such a large portion given to Ripley’s deep-space
retrieval, recuperation, judgment, and life back on Earth. The
novelization dedicates three chapters—or forty-five pages—to
this. It’s a nice change and a nice, gradual complacency before the
reign of terror begins.

There
was only one scene in the novelization which ruffled my figurative
feathers. One of the most iconic scenes from the movie was Ripley’s
heroic donning of the Caterpillar P-5000 Powered Work Loader and
shouting at the queen alien, “Get away from her, you bitch!”
Thus ensues a pretty cool fight scene. However, in the novelization,
Foster has decided to write a mickey mouse version of the classic
one-liner: “Get away from her, you!”
(457). This is strange because Valquez drops the F-bomb once and
“damn” is used three times. Why the deletion of “bitch”?

------------

Now
two-thirds the way through the Alien trilogy, I can see a pattern
emerge: (1) if the book's scene match my memory of the same scenes,
then I'm a satisfied reader; if there's something extra, it's of
minor interest, (3) if something like a memorable quote is changed, I
protest. BUT, that's expected of novelizations. Aside from the Alien
trilogy, I have only ever read the Back to the Future (1985) by
George Gipe. While the movie was excellent, the novelization was
quite forgettable... not the same with the Alien trilogy. Full steam
ahead!

Saturday, July 12, 2014

The Whispers anthology
series was recommended to me some time back as being one of the best horror
anthologies. I had known that some of the horror in Whispers V was
infused with fantasy, but my fingers were cross that the horror would outshine
any bit errant fantasy (because, as you know, I have a low toleration for
fantasy).

Psychological and body
horror impress me much more than supernatural, demonic haunting horror. Save
for one or two stories, none of them reek of the stereotypical horror that
keeps me from reading some of the “favorite” books in the genre. So, my hats
goes off to the editor, Stuart David Schiff, for providing what he calls in his
preface as “something a little bit different”—the “out-of-common story, the
beyond-the pale work, the unusual twist”. Indeed, Mr. Schiff; good show!

The star in this anthology
is easy to pick out. My favorite story is also the shortest: Wade Kenny’s
3-page shortstory “A Country Home” (1985). It’s brevity is key to its punch
and, boy, what a punch! My jaw slackened and I whispered a few expletives… it
was that good. I had never heard of Wade Kenny before, which is no surprise
because I only know three of the authors: Connie Willis, F. Paul Wilson, and Jerry
Sohl. Sadly, Wade Kenny only wrote one additional short story, “A Telephone
Booth” (1982), for another one of Schiff’s anthologies: Death (1982).
That’s going on my to-buy list!

------------

Willis, Connie: Substitution
Trick (1985, shortstory) – 4/5

Houdini had mystified and
fooled many with his attempts at escapism, but his wizened mind grew skeptical
because of his entertaining deceit. Prior to his mother’s death, they shared
moments unknowable to others; these memories Houdini has been unable to experience
through mediums—thus his calling them fakes. After Houdini’s own death, he
meets his mother who comforts him in the seasickness of the afterlife and helps
him to contact his wife Bess through a medium. 9 pages

Drake, David: Dreams in Amber
(1985, shortstory) – 4/5

A bead of amber drapes the
neck of Saturnus, sending mental images and thoughts to the man so that he can
fulfill a task for its occupant. Saturnus finds the Respectable Allectus, Chief
of Imperial Accounts, for the mission of infiltrating the castle, gain entry to
the strongroom, and confront the force there and its implications for not only
the Roman Empire, but also the world. 13 pages

Cave, Hugh H.: Footprints in
Perdu (1985, shortstory) – 5/5

An American nurse and doctor
couple in Haiti
catch wind of a girl in the hills who’s ostracized by the village for being a
werewolf. The local lore makes no impression on them, so they continue to the
squalid village
of Perdu. Meat, and food
in general, is difficult to come by so the locals smoke a weed that suppresses
their appetite. The couple meet an influential man who is gracious enough to
feed them meat and give directions to find the baby-eating werewolf. 11 pages

Philip Goodloe has kicked
the bucket. He used to rock, used to produce hit after hit, used to collaborate
with Lenny Winter for his fame and fortune. Philip, birth name of Flip, can
only blame himself for his downfall: young women and smack. When Lenny hears of
Flip’s death, the radio begins to play a string of hits which he had helped
support when he was an opportunistic DJ. Soon, the coincidences are too much.
14 pages

Kenny, Wade: A Country Home
(1985, shortstory) – 5/5

With bucolic bliss comes
responsibility; the toil of continual daily chores and the need to do one’s own
dirty, yet necessary, work. The Casselman family—a husband and wife with their
baby daughter Katie—live in such simplicity. Doug’s duty was to drown the
kittens while his wife was out. He dug the hole, retrieved the sack his wife had
seemingly filled, then drowned and buried its contents. His wife returns,
looking for Katie. 3 pages

Nolan, William F.: Of Time
and Kathy Benedict (1984, novelette) – 3/5

For the 80th anniversary of
the Ford Motor Company, research specialist Kathy has the assignment of
researching automobiles from 1902, specifically the “999” racing machine of
lore. Relaxing out in a lake alone, a freak storm and wave capsize her boat.
When she awakens, she realizes that it’s the year 1902 and the her hero is one
of the men responsible for the famous “999”. Love blossoms, the car races, and
a lake date looms. 22 pages

Etchison, Dennis: Deadspace
(1985, novelette) – 3/5

The Holmly Hotel is Beverly Hills is like a
closed universe where the same people perform the same actions, only Wintner is
a stalker among the sheep. Wintner, a producer, aims to meet an actor named Joe
Gillis so that he can cast him in a lead role, but Gillis never picks up the
phone. As a hidden pool, Wintner has passing conversations with a sunbathing
beauty and the hulking figure of a woman in a tent. News breaks his reverie;
his universe shrinks. 22 pages

Sohl, Jerry: Cabin Number
Six (1985, shortstory) – 2/5

A clairvoyant elderly lady
and her son Henry own a rundown motel just off the new interstate. As she
predicts, a couple arrive at the motel with a booking from Dr. Woodford, a
marriage counselor. The exuberant rate of $50 for the room and $5 for ice makes
George, the husband, sour with frustration while his troubled wife Joan
antagonizes his foul mood. From outside, a sinister duo peer through the
window; from within, the demons attack and claw the couple. 12 pages

Tem, Steve Rasnic: Father’s
Day (1985, shortstory) – 4/5

Will didn’t have the most
ideal childhood. His father was—still is—an alcoholic and starved Will of
affection while his mother stood by her man. How with his own son, Will hasn’t
visited his parents for seven years and his own wife insists they visit the
lonely couple. Will realizes his authoritative relationship with his son is too
tense, but the victimized child in himself is also the vindictive predator. 10
pages

Ryan, Alan: The East
Beaverton Monster (1985, shortstory) – 4/5

The quiet town of East Beaverton is a sleepy
town where the men work 9 to 5 in the city and where the housewives are bored
alone at home… unless the exotic telephone repairman visits. When Dr. Lavalette
opens a new women’s weight clinic in town, Beatrice and Candace are ager to
shift their village gossip to the unexpected. They get wondrous results from
the weight treatment but ignore the follow-up warning as they continue to watch
their weight. 16 pages

Tinker, Libby: The Horse (1985,
shortstory) – 3/5

Life is breathed into a
newborn foal while its mother passes away amid its bloody birth. Struggling to
stand on its own four legs, a woman comes to act as a wet nurse to the young
colt, offering it sweetened fingers to suck on. Though born fingered and
clawed, the woman applies her maternal instinct however, on its fourth day
alive, the dreaded dusk approaches. 6 pages

Dr. Insomniatreat a B-grade film star of yesteryear—Rich
Dutcher. Though he’s not proud of the work he had done, he memories are still
alive in the doctor, one of his fans from the “Time Seekers” series. With Rich
dying of metastasizing cancer, Dr. Insomnia tries to treat his mind with
positive resonance so that he can fight the death with will. As the same time,
the doctor, herself, comes down with illness. 12 pages

Morrell, David: For These
and All My Sins (1984, shortstory) – 4/5

Driving eastward home
through Nebraska,
a man becomes stranded outside a small town just off the interstate. There to
find a mechanic, he witnesses the grotesque ugliness of all the town’s people.
Having to resort to asking for a beer and chips at the town’s only diner, the
closed diner’s waitress takes him home, where she feeds him in the dark the
best meal of his life. She also tells him of the town’s ugly history and of his
ugly meal. 13 pages

Wagner, Karl Edward: Beyond
Any Measure (1982, novella) – 3/5

Though much of Lisette’s
family’s history is placed in London, she was
born in America
to her American parents. Now studying art in London, since her arrival, she has been
experiencing a recurring dream involving a mirror, an antique watch, and blood.
Her roommate suggests Dr. Magners, a fringe-science psychotherapist interested
in hypnotizing her for free. After each session, memories of her past life
effervesce and her own life is changed in undetectable ways. 45 pages

Friday, July 11, 2014

I was first exposed to D.G.
Compton thanks to Joachim’s posts regarding the author’s work, namely Synthajoy
(1968). Since I was unable to procure that novel in a timely manner, I managed
by first gathering a few novels of which I get first get a taste for his prose.
While Farewell Earth’s Bliss (1966) may not be his flagship novel, it
was a satisfying introduction to his work and whetted my appetite for more of
his work. The next time I ordered second-hand books from online (thank you
Powells), I managed to pick up one more Compton
novel—the same one featured here.

But Matthew Oliver is flesh
and blood and full of questions—not nearly as certain as the machine he’s
appointed to serve.

And the right hand of
science seldom knows what the left hand is doing…”

------------

Through the popular yet
nebulous underground organization calling itself the Civil Liberties Committee
(the CLC), Matthew is hired by his contact, named Gryphon, to penetrate the
Colindale Institute where mysterious work is being done on a large
computational device; however, Matthew only knows that his social statistics
expertise is need, which is an odd requirement for a computing job. When
Gryphon is found murdered, Matthew feels compelled to complete his task for the
CLC, but his religious wife isn’t as progressive as his professional
consciousness.

Soon, through the
passive-aggressive director Professor Billon, Matthew learns the truth of the
massive complex machine: it dictates mankind’s future. Rather than being godly
omniscient, a team of programmers tediously gather all quantitative data in
papers—ranging from peer-reviewed submissions to undergraduate work—in order
for the great machine to extrapolate qualitative data: “[O]nce you have an
associative capability you can use it in non-quantitative fields. Anything may
be expressed in terms of anything …. pride, love, hate, work incentives,
conscience, aesthetics and so on” (113).

His assistant relates the
broad power the machine has over human progress: “Did you know we put the
stopper on climate control as too controversial … without the weather, what’d
there be left to complain about? Except the Government, of course … Maybe
that’s why they left us the weather” (165).

Physically separated from
the outside world, the Colindale Institute is an obviously secret affair; more
so, even the security arrangement is a secretive detail: phones are tapped,
movements are followed, and houses are rigged with microphones. Matthew’s wife,
Abigail, is well aware of the security amid their new home as she was the first
to personally discover the microphones, so conversations of doubt about the
entire project must be dampened for fear of reprisal.

Matthew’s faith toward his
sociology field and his job at Colindale take precedence over his sensitivity
toward the intelligence of his wife, a firmly resolute Catholic woman. His
temper flares at her thoughtless indifference to the unheralded project, but
his professional pride convinces himself that what man has created must be
right—the facts of life must dictate what life will become. In contrast to her
devotion of her faith, she feels that she must disobey her husband—though
she’ll continue to feed him after work and make dutiful love with him—she
sights her sights on exposing the truth behind the project. She’s able to shake
her tail and contact her brother, the black sheep of the family who has enlisted
himself in a variety of causes and who has recently asked for a considerable
amount of money so that he can go to Africa
for yet another cause; he is, however, still in town.

Both Abigail and Matthew are
surprised to learn that his predecessor was murdered, the reason of which for
his quick employment. Abigail wants him to forego his position but Matthew
maintains that everything is fine: his secretary is supportive—though a little
too liberal and flirtatious—, his programmer colleague is knowledgeable and
capable, and his colleagues are professional and goal-related. One link to his
predecessor remains: the missing contents of a secret project between the late
professor and the director, Billon. For the sake of both professional and
personal curiosity, Matthew confronts the director for an explanation.

While some of his colleagues
may be content to perform the secretive task because it’s simply an
“intellectual exercise and a harmless way of keeping” the director’s curiosity
piqued (175), at the same time some delve deeper into the nature of the
machine’s task:

While
it might be possible to deduce grass from the needs of a horse, to work the
other way is utter nonsense. The ability to deduce a horse from the properties
of grass is quite beyond us. (176)

While waiting for the
initial results of the run program, Matthew stands at a conflict of
consciousness; thought he’s committed to his work, he feels the ultimate goal
of the project to be too distant, too far-fetched, too quantitative. While he
and a few of his colleagues play poker, he observes:

He
enjoyed cards for their own sake: their precise shape and texture, the
excitement of each new hand, the skills of dealing and shuffling, he enjoyed it
all. So that, within limits, he had objection to losing. (171)

Though he’s a quantitative,
number-crunching analyst and fearful of the results of the ultimate project, he
still convinces himself of his high-held pride in enjoying a simple game for
its simplicity without realizing that every move in poker in a game of
statistics—his precise area of expertise. Even the most knowledged of professional
can be self-delusional; even the experts gamble with outcome.

------------

Let me be honest: I hate,
hate, hate the book’s own synopsis; it’s exaggerated, errant and misleading.
The reader would suspect the book to be about the giant, god-like computer but,
then the reader may be disappointed by, the lack of focus on the computer
itself. Sure, there are scenes of jargon from the scientists in-the-know, but
largely the plot revolves around Matthew and Abigail’s dealing with the truth
of the machine; it’s a story of faith, a story of conviction and action on that
conviction.

The initial dynamic of the
relationship between the married couple of Matthew of Abigail is infusing to
the plot; idiosyncratic yet acceptable tensions arise and set the course of
Compton’s plot, yet the roles they accept slowly become stereotyped, almost
one-dimensional: Matthew the scientists accepts his fate as a scientist while
the receptive Abigail accepts her role as the church patron and blind follower.
I suppose, one of the premises of the plot is that they are both blind
followers of their faith—one of religion and one of science—but the outcome
feels too one-dimensional.

Therein lays the fault: the
one-dimensional frisson between husband and wife over the singularly
controversial topic: the direction of mankind. Abigail’s uneducated role as
housewife and uneducated role as conspirator plays tune to the weak,
intellectually inferior in much of popular science-fiction literature (granted,
not all); the male role as the logical scientist versus the emotional role as
the housewife… could it get any more stereotypical?

Coming to the stereotypes of
their roles, one particular exchange of theirs which stood out as unreasonable,
non-natural…. who speaks like this? Sometimes the dialogue is just too eloquent
for its own good: As the unreal Abigail speaks, “Who knows what we mightn’t
whisper to each other in our personal post-coital stupor” (131). Really?

Aside from occasional
detached robot-like conversations like this, there is a predictable plot thread
which I found well conceived yet poorly executed; the entire conspiracy against
the machine was predictable from the onset, meaning of course Abigail’s brother
didn’t have any intention on going to Africa
and of course he was planning to sabotage the project somehow. While the method
of sabotage was indeed a mystery to me, the actual execution—with people and
devices—was fairly pedestrian.

I can’t figure why it was
written in that manner, but it still provided a good tension between the
conflicting “what is right” of Matthew and Abigail and what others think—whose
sense of “what is right” is justified by a terrorist act?

------------

An excellent first third was
ever-so slightly diminished by a tense yet unreal lackluster third, ending with
the tarnished head of poor execution. Thankfully, while the predictability was
its only flaw, the result stands on its own—a solid novel with a few flaws,
like many other novels. He has proven to be a good writer and I look forward to
much of his work which line my shelves: The Silent Multitude (1966), Synthajoy
(1968), and Chronocules (1970).

Thursday, July 10, 2014

I’ve now read
as many Brunner novels as there are in the English alphabet—for the less
literate, that number is twenty-six—, nineteen of which are still on my
shelves. That’s a pretty good keep-rate: better than A.E. van Vogt (6 of 10), a
lot better than Frederik Pohl (9 of 18) and a hell of a lot better than Jack
McDevitt (2 of 10) and Robert Silverberg (1 of 5). I’m a sucker for Brunner but
he’s not infallible. This is my chief worry—that I may pick up a dud—whenever I
chose to read a new Brunner novel; though the disappointment rate is low, it’s
like a sword through my chest each time. The cover and synopsis of The
Avengers of Carrig felt like the tip of that sword was already piecing the
skin, waiting to be plunged hilt-deep.

Rear cover
synopsis:

“Once the city of Carrig stood supreme on this planet that had
been settled by space refugees in the distant, forgotten past. From every
corner of this primitive lost world caravans came to trade—and to view the
great King-Hunt, the gruesome test by which the people of Carrig chose their
rulers.

Then from space came new arrivals. And with them came their
invincible death guns and their ruthless, all-powerful tyranny.

Now there would be no King-Hunt in Carrig, or hope for the
planet-unless a fool-hardy high-born named Saikmar and a beautiful Earthling
space-spy named Maddalena, could do the impossible…”

------------

The inaptly named planet Fourteen is one
of many populated by the displaced people of a once known system named
Zarathustra. When that system’s sun exploded eight hundred years ago, a
diaspora on an epic scale flung its people across all of space in hopes that
they could settle new planets and have fresh beginnings. Earth and its Corps
Galactica have known about the planet’s fate and have been safekeeping the
population of each from marauding pirates bent on forcing them into slavery.
The inhabits worlds from the Zarathustra diaspora tend to be backwater simple
places with flourishing trade routes pulled by indigenous animals and a social
hierarchy topped by kings and lords. When left untouched, each planet would
have developed its own culture, its own technology, and its own destiny; when
zealous marauders bring their superior technology to such a place, they tend to
make themselves kings.

The yearly king-hunt in the planet’s
largest city, Carrig, is a festival where the winner becomes the “legal lord of
Carrig” (40). The status of Lord is the highest attainable title available to
the people of Carrig with the title of King reserved for the winged creature
which resides in the steamy, pocked landscape of the volcanic mountain range
near Carrig. In the king-hunt, manned gliders take to the sky riding the
currents of warm air in order to battle with the parradile (a pterodactyl-like
creature), the King of which is the largest. When someone eventually strikes it
down, he becomes the new Lord.

For the last eighteen years, no one has
been able to slay the King—an unheard of streak which raises the suspicion of
many participants. The most hopeful participant in the nearly king-hunt is
Saikmar son of Corrie, a cherubic-faced man most favored by bookies in the
city. Rumor is that the current Lord has been spiking soporific drinks for the
most favored hunter, so Saikmar vigilant in the lead-up to the hunt. The Lord
has a touch of guilt for having let the King grow too large to kill and for
allowing himself to reign for the last eighteen years, so he will allow the
hunt to continue without his intervention, a move which will usher in a new
Lord, supplanting him.

As the participants gather, Saikmar
stands proud. However, one man who had recently come to the city in a
caravan—coinciding with the murder of its head trader and the burning of his
house—one man seems more arrogant than all the others. Claiming himself to be a
southerner, none are convinced of the interlopers origin, but the rules allow
outsiders to participate in the king-hunt. As the king-hunt commences,
excitement grips the city of Carrig as the King swoops from its cave—the
king-hunt has just begun… until a white glider-shaped vehicle shoots down the
King with one strike of its fierce lightening weapon. The King has been slain
and a new Lord must be crowned.

An
Corps agent on Planet Fourteen—the same trader who was killed by the
“southerners”—has been out of contact for a while, so Corps decide to send a
replacement. Maddalena Santos may be one the smartest recruits of her base, but
she also has one the most displeasing attitudes, making her an outcast even
amid her colleagues. When Commandant Brzeska needs to choose one of his crew
for the solitary mission, Maddalena’s poor attitude and her knownledge of
languages make her he perfect candidate. She and Patrol Major Langenschmidt
jump across space to Planet Fourteen, but are instantly attacked by a
trigger-happy pilot in orbit which sends the two of them and their craft
crashing to the ground. Having ejected, Maddalena trudges through the snow in
search of shelter or Langernschmidt… whichever comes first.

Meanwhile, Saikmar is depressed about
this stolen chance to win the king-hunt for his clan. Thinking himself a
refugee, he flees Carrig for a winter’s stay at a northern sanctuary built into
well-aged hull of the diaspora which had brought them to the planet they now
call home. Before the sanctuary seals itself for the winter, Saikmar climbs in
the frigid hills where he find a solitary parradile making itself a nest.
Native to the tropical south and the steamy Smoking Hills of Carrig, the
parradile is unaccustomed to a winter. Each day, he visits the beast; normally,
the parradiles are feared for taking children and cattle, but this parradile is
different—it exhibits intelligence. One day, Saikmar discovers the parradile
had brought back a beautiful woman, who the parradile had saved from the lethal
cold.

Flown back to the sanctuary by the
parradile, the two settle in for the long winter. Maddaladen concocts a story
about being from the south, but not everyone is sure of her origins. She is
curious to find the ship’s reactors still working, creating channels of steam
for heating and cooking. When she finds a passageway leading to a
reactor-warmed room, she sees an ancient device used for making nutritional
food in bulk. Savvy with such technology, the machine starts after centuries of
disrepair, much to the reverent amazement of the sanctuary’s head priestess,
Nyloo. When things begin to settle down, one event shocks them more than the
rediscovery of food processing—the coming of the same mountain parradile.

Truth eventually reaches the Corps: The
victor with amazing powers is actually a citizen of another system (Cyclops) who
making slaves of Planet Fourteen in order to mine the heavy metals from the
Smoking Hills, which he and his cohorts ship back to their planet. Combining
their knowledge, Saikmar and Maddaladen unhatch a plan to bring down the
nefarious Lord, but he might usurp himself from this throne with his poor
understanding of the local people; they EXPECT a king-hunt every year and the
new Lord is unwilling to fulfill their demands—anyway, he had already chased
out all the parradiles because of their interfering with his mining. Either
way, his end is near.

------------

There are two aspects to this novel
which, in many other instances, usually turn me off: (1) the medieval way of
the life of the townsfolk, the importance of the titles such as Lord, and
anything that resembles a dragon/pterodactyl; and (2) the far-reaching strength
of a central organization tasked with secretly maintaining that statuses of
entire planets. The former is often shared with many fantasy novels and the
latter often found in early pulp SF; combine the two and the result should be
unreadable—not so.

The weave of the two stories—Saikmar and
Maddaladen—is a little too coincidental for the story’s length. Their meeting
felt forced, but the unfolding of the story from the halfway point on is quite
good, a pace matched with Fourteen’s history, more background about the
Zarathustra diaspora, more depth to the culture of the Carrig, and an
interesting turn of events regarding the parradiles. So, if the reader can
ignore the coincidental affairs, the rest of the book is an excellent course of
events… until the conclusion, which felt obvious every step of the way.

The Avengers of Carrig is the second book in a three-book series which
explores the diaspora of Zarathustra through the eyes of three cultures of
those affected. The first book in the series, Polymath (1974),
highlights one ship’s inability to cope with the settlement on their new
planet, even with the polymath on aboard. The third novel, The Repairmen of
Cyclops (1965), I haven’t read it but it MAY crossover with some of the
information about Cyclops found in The Avengers of Carrig: the planet
has a very poor content of heavy metals and relies on imported metals from the
asteroids and from other systems, yet without the metals they must make due…
something along those lines.

------------

I haven’t had the pleasure of reading
“Secret Agent of Terra” (1962) from which this book is expanded. At least the
novel-length version of the story has a better title! This is yet another
addition to my ever expanding Brunner library, one of which will eventually,
fingers crossed, come across all of Brunner’s greats and no more of his dreary
flops… again, fingers crossed because, even as one of his biggest fans, I know
Brunner isn’t immune from producing drivel.

Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Having loved reading science
fiction for a full seven years, one would suspect the reviewer of also loving
science fiction movies; here, one would be incorrect to a great degree.
Generally, I really don’t like many science fiction movies for a number of
reasons: (1) over-glamorizing the science-y aspect, (2) injecting cheesy
Hollywood drama, (3) rehashing so many SF clichés, (4) interweaving the genre
with fantasy or the paranormal, (5) pushing the movie toward more action than
substance, (6) featuring Tom Cruise or (7) basing the movie on some lame
premise. Good science fiction movies are far and few between.

One movie stands out among
all others for its original blend of science fiction and horror, action and substance,
quality and appeal, and timelessness. To be blunt, Alien scared the shit
of me when I was young; even now it sets my nerves on end (genuine horror or
nostalgia, you be the judge). Considering that the story is now thirty-five
years old and still haunts the memories of past impressionable minds… only Star
Wars (I may never say this again) can be compared to its impression. For me, Alien,
to this day,epitomizes an excellent science fiction movie plot
(obviously without regard for social science fiction—give me flamethrowers,
aliens and spaceships!).

Call is nostalgia if you
like, but when a fan of Alien and science fiction literature, like
myself, picks up a novelization of a movie, you can bet that the expectations
are high and fuelled purely by nostalgia. Thanks to Alan Dean Foster’s fine
prose and perspective, the novelization of Alien reflects the movie very
closely. Although I didn’t almost pee my pants, my eyes did remain glued on the
pages, all 218 pages of which I consumed in one day.

Amen.

I read the Omnibus edition (Warner, 1993), so the page numbers may differ from the cover featured (Titan Books, 2014).

Movie tagline:

“In space no one can hear
your scream.”

------------

Light-years from Earth, the
deep-space commercial tug Nostromo slides through the featureless void
of subspace with two billion tons of crude oil. As the automatic refinery
processes the oil, seven dreamers lay in their cryogenic chambers and Mother,
the ship’s artificial intelligence, watches over them like its name suggests.
When Mother detects something like a distress signal, it puts the Nostromo
and its crew on a course to investigate the source of the signal. The crew is
awoken.

Unbeknownst to the crew
aside from the captain/pilot Dallas,
their three-month journey home should have landed them in Earth’s orbit with
the blue marble itself gracing their view screens. When they are unable to
locate Earth or even contact traffic control, Ripley, the ship’s warrant
officer, discovers that they are in fact in the system of Zeta II Reticuli. Dallas informs everyone
of the beacon broadcast, a non-standard signal almost certainly of alien origin.
The science officer, Ash, confers with Mother on a number of possibilities but
it’s Ripley, again, who discovers that the distress beacon is actually a
quarantine warning. Ripley begins to doubt Ash’s position among the crew and
his loyalty to their humanity.

Ripley takes the ship down
to the surface of the planet, which is nearly as dense as Earth but much
smaller and covered in an inhospitable atmosphere choked with dust. It’s this
dust which clogs intakes, overheats engines, and creates fires in power cells.
Landing, the ship is in obvious need of repair while a team of three—Dallas,
Kane and Lambert—venture through the yellow dusty mist to While Ash, Ripley and
the two engineers, Brett and Parker, stay aboard the Nostromo, the
latter two begrudgingly make repairs and bitch about not receiving full shares,
the three who ventured forth discover the source of the signal: a giant,
u-shaped craft held at a precarious angle on the planet’s surface.

The huge derelict alien
craft has three open ports which Dallas,
Kane and Lambert access and discover the physical source of the beacon.
Curiosity gets the best of them and they attempt to explore the depths of the
ship. Having set up a winch, Kane is lowered through an interior channel where
he discovers a vast cavern he assumes to be a storage room. The oppressive heat
of the cave causes him discomfort and the well-organized leathery sacs cause
him confusion. In an ignorant attempt to pry one open, he succeeds and is
gripped by the unwelcome embrace of a facehugger. When Dallas and Lambert reel him back up, the
unsightly spider alarms them and they flee back to the ship with Kane in tow.

Ripley is unwilling to allow
the three-man team back into the ship for fear of xenological contamination;
even with the commands and threats of Dallas,
Ripley does not open the exterior hatch, but Ash does comply, going against all
protocols of decontamination. With Kane supine on the autodoc, Ash probes the
facehugger with an assortment of tools, only to discover that it uses an
extremely acidic defense mechanism—its blood dissolves linen, plastic and even
the metal of the hull. Seeing facehugger regenerate its wound, the only option
is to let it remain on Kane’s face for fear of either killing him via the
parasite or destroying the ship via the corrosive blood.

Brett and Parker complete
their arduous task of fixing a number of systems and prepare the ship to leave
the planet and dock with its massive cargo of oil in order to return to Earth.
Meanwhile, Ash watches over Kane and calls the crew to come observe two
sequential events at the autodoc: (1) the facehugger detached itself from
Kane’s face and is not lifeless and (2) Kane’s recent recovery, who has
symptoms of amnesia and a ravenous hunger, but he physically appears to be in
fine form. Homeward bound, the crew look forward to ten months of cryo-sleep
and decide to share one last meal together. Kane’s three-meal hunger is
interrupted by a pain in his chest, the cause of which bursts through his chest
and scurries off to hide, a grotesque creature covered in Kane’s organs and
blood.

The shocked crew decide it
can’t exactly kill the creature because of its corrosive blood, so a method of
shocking and netting the little creature is started. They have one week to
capture it and send it out the airlock before the ships runs out of oxygen and
before they return to cryo-sleep to await for their return to Earth. As they
hunt for the creature with electronic trackers, Brett is assigned to recover
Jones—the ship’s cat—but ends up being taken by the alien which stalks the air
ducts. Both Ripley and Parker observe the alien’s incredible strength as it
lifted Brett clear off the floor. As they cat had fled the equipment bay during
the attack on Brett, so too do Ripley and Parker run away from the scene of
fear.

Realizing that rods of
electricity were not going to tame the alien predator stalking their lives,
they upgrade their weapons to flamethrowers and remain convinced that they must
corral the creature toward an airlock, where they can eject the fearsome hunter
into the vacuum of space. After Dallas’s
unexpected death, the five remaining crew are skittish to every susurrus or
scrape made within the Nostromo. Parker is the first to warn Ripley of
the alien’s location next to an airlock. From her console, she starts the
sequence to close the airlock; the alien is mesmerized by the flashing green
warning light, but when someone triggers the klaxon, the alien drops out of the
lock, gets its arm stuck in the closing door and flees from the scene, knocking
over Parker in the process.

The acid of its amputated
limb corrodes the metal of the door; air leaks through the hole causing a hull
breach. The crew panic and struggle to regain control of their precious
atmosphere. When the incident comes under control, Ripley is the first to ramp
up her suspicions of Ash; she consults Mother with the following query: IS ASH
PROTECTING THE ALIEN? Is one man at fault in the Nostromo for the
travesty unleashed, or is the Company—concerned for the matters of “maximizing
profit, minimizing loss” (200)—the prime culprit?

From my memory, I presume
the novelization of Alien to be faithful to the movie. The one aspect of
the book which doesn’t make the movie is the pace; at the half-way point
through the novel, Ash and Dallas
discover the facehugger had detached itself from Kane’s face.

The first half of the
novelization feels bloated with dialogue between the engineers Brett and
Parker. There are sections where the reader is dragged through their technical
conversations about power cells, welding, striping components, and replacing
modules. The stodgy dialogue characterizes the disgruntled duo but adds very
little to the plot. Perhaps it’s also an attempt to characterize the Nostromo
as a sympathetic cause. While the name Nostromo lives well in our
memories of science fiction—“This is Ripley … warrant-officer, last survivor of
the commercial starship Nostromo, signing of this entry” (217-218)—no
one really sympathizes with the ship… only the circumstances within the ship.

One sensation was captured
beautifully in Foster’s novelization, which matches my memories of the movie:
the sense of fear doesn’t rest in the physical sight of the alien, but in
knowing that it’s there, anywhere. Just as the alien is occasionally glimpsed
in the film, Foster pens a few brief scenes where only portions of the alien
are visible to the crew: its arms tearing Parker from the floor, its hand
pulling Dallas through the grating, its tail bobbing near the airlock, its arm
stuck in the airlock door, its head peering through the glass of Ripley’s
closet door. Here in the novelization, the fearsome alien is never seen in its
entirety—only the innate fear of the creature is visible in the crew’s
desperate attempts to drive it from their ship, their home.

Which brings to mind a
famous JFK quote: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”. To the
reader, this means that the characters’ fear is the catalyst for the reader’s
fear, not the manifestation of the fearful object. While the alien may scare
them witlessly when their in its terrible presence, the lurking fear of its
arrival and their death is their prime sense of hopelessness.

Because of the long
introduction with all the technical dialogue, the conclusion is rather abrupt.
The action sequences in the book weren’t as well paced as the movie, resulting
in jittery scenes of flight or fight. The key scene of Ripley’s frustration
with the self-destruction mechanism isn’t highlighted in the novelization—it’s
given a cursory mention. That was one scene in the movie where my memory is the
most vivid: the elaborate self-destruct sequence and the impending doom from
the well modulated, comforting voice of Mother.

Thankfully, the novelization
doesn’t self-destruct. Foster’s prose is occasionally eloquent and his choice
of vocabulary interesting. Of course there are the occasional deeper insights
into the functioning of the Nostromo or further depth to characters, but
nothing is errant. On the technical side, there’s only one flaw concerning the
Doppler effect and the speed of light: “The Nostromo achieved, exceeded
the speed of light … Stars ahead of them became blue, those behind shifted red”
(128): if you exceed the speed of light, there is no light to shift.

------------

Back in 2007, Alien
was my 22nd novel of the year. Later, Aliens was the 60th novel of the
year and Alien 3 was the 101st (busy year of reading that was!). Now, seven
years later, I’m on an eight-day holiday all alone and I will do the honor of
reading the three books in sequence (along with some additional horror short
stories). I may be scared of the dark during the next few days.

Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Eons ago, I remember browsing
historical fiction authors online while looking for one that might interest me.
Having read only of smattering of SF, I settled upon some familiar authors: Kim
Stanley Robinson’s The Years of Rice and Salt (2002) and Poul Anderson’s
The Boat of a Million Years (1989). I’ve never been one very interested
in studying history, so I wasn’t bowled over by the sub-genre of speculative
fiction and wasn’t keen on venturing further in with authors like Harry
Turtledove or Parke Godwin (pretty much the only two names I could recall from
the sub-genre). While I was browsing Elite Bookstore (now selling mainly
Japanese titles) in Bangkok, I spotted one of Godwin’s few science fiction titles:
Limbo Search. Though the colors and composition of the cover were
appalling, I bought and filed it on my shelves reluctant to peer into its
chapters.

Rear cover synopsis:

“A CRY FOR HELP

A bloodied veteran of Limbo
Search, it is Charley Stoner’s job to protect unmanned planets from deadly
corporate exploitation. Until now, nothing has ever gone beyond the range of
his considerable experience… Until now.

A WARNING

A mysterious, distorted message
has been intercepted from the impossible blackness of empty, alien
space—beckoning Stoner and an untested crew toward the dangerous uncertainty of
entity invasion.

AN INVITATION

Combat readiness has been
activated. All that is known must be abandoned. Hydri IV Search Mission is
underway, moving Stoner and his raw trainees forward on the incredible
adventure they only dreamed—and feared—was possible.”

------------

Earth’s corporations are
exploitive when it comes to new resources—namely, new virgin planets. Rather
than allowing each mega-corporation full freedom to ravage the planets of their
precious metals, UNESA (United Earth Space Authority) has set up listening
stations around Earth’s galactic neighborhood to eavesdrop on the corporations’
chatter. One such station, Limbo Search, is placed around Hydri Beta;
though the Corporations haven’t yet surveyed, let alone exploit, the planets of
the system, Limbo Search keeps a polyglottic ear to the sky: English,
Mandarin, Russian, French and Hispanic Complex.

While all search crew aboard
listening stations must be multi-lingual and abstain from the vices of alcohol,
tobacco and sex, Charley Stoner’s (Warrant Officer) station of Limbo Search only
has the former requirement. Alcohol and tobacco are not condoned but can be
found about while relationships on the mixed-sex on the station are a tepid
affair spoilt by the nature of the stressful job. Pairing off is almost a
formality and making any sort of future plans (be they on the station or on
Mars) borders on taboo.

Rather than finding chatter
between corporations, their survey ships and Earth, Limbo Search
intercepts an alien signal from the planet of Hydri IV. The strange signal has
dual harmonics and sounds like the lowed pitch of two singers crossing through
resonance and dissonance. The ground-based transmission station is difficult to
pin down at their distance so Stoner sends a Search Mission to the planet to
triangulate the transmission. However, around the planet and coming out of
sub-space is a gigantic alien ship. It simply sits there; the crew of the Search
Mission wait for their deaths but realize that something is wrong with the
ship. It doesn’t respond to any form of hail nor does it strike them dead; one
crew member posits that the alien sub-space engine malfunctioned and the alien
crew are disabled.

Much like the half-hearted love life on Limbo Search, the
division between UNESA and the Corporation is blurred by time. Intelligence
Officer Pauley, aboard Limbo Search, is eventually made privy to the
fact that there is a corporate mole on the station. Though Pauley initially
fingers Beaudry as the suspect because of his atypical flawless background,
Pauley's senior (Waites) informs him that the innocuous Vietnamese-ethnic Thun.
Pauley goes forward with the Waites' plan to rid themselves of the mole even
though Pauley himself was certain Beaudry was the odd man out. Waites stands to
the side, amused.

Meanwhile, amid the mild yet invasive turbulence of love and deceit, the
land-based alien signal intermittently broadcasts and one fact becomes clear: it's
speaking human languages, albeit very slowly. Are there alien-equivalent
eavesdroppers like themselves beyond their galactic neighborhood, which has
just gotten much, much smaller?

------------

Limbo Search is a difficult book to start. Almost the first 20%
of the book is crammed with acronyms, pilot-related vernacular and heavy detail
related to the environment in which the crew are situated. It's not fun, it's
not easy, and it certainly isn't friendly top the reader. BUT, this can be
forgiven as the frisson of emotion works its way through the technical cracks
of the plot to slowly effervesce; as this unfolds, the emotional content of the
plot clouts the technical detail until it too is pure and difficult to grasp.
As every dawn has a dusk, so too does the plot lapse back into a technical
fixation but ends with a whip snap of emotion.

Because of initial loss in the techno-blabber, I may have lost the
subtle characterization Godwin had been trying to establish and its
repercussions. While the steady transition from technical to emotional was
masterful, it was difficult to understand as a story-telling vehicle from a
single read. In retrospect, I see the stress-laden crew in their heavily
technical environment fighting with their basic humanity: freedom from
restraint. The professional strain combined with the nanny state of their work
environment compels them to accept superficial relationships which become the
only drama in their rather placid lives.

Even the aliens are a—I can't really say “clever” because it's too
obvious, but—good vehicle to shatter the technological pride of the humans and
belittle their emotional understanding of humanity. I feel compelled to say
that the aliens are “stereotypical aliens” but that’s almost an oxymoron, yet
it will suffice for now. Aboard the Limbo Search, stereotypes are also
abound: the Vietnamese man who still drinks rice whiskey, the German man who
interjects his speech with Germanisms, and the addicted smoker who squirrels
away cigarettes and willingly incurs the fines resulting from his habit.

While each personality may be nebulous as the corporations which exploit
the cosmos, the surface-level emotional investment between characters creates a
unique tension between them—a token pairing for the same of drama. This, too,
imparts tension with the reader, who observes (in third-person omniscient) the
unnecessary pairing-off and the resulting battle of soullessly authenticating
the relationship. As mentioned before, even the conclusion offers whiplash of
emotion; this whiplash isn’t directed at the reader to evoke a response, rather
a coming-to-terms for the character in situ.

------------

Beneath the overarching technological/emotional plot, there lingers a
tang of absurdity which the reviewer can’t pin down. The sixth-sense of
absurdity is bolstered by one of Parke Godwin’s other series: Snake Oil (Waiting
for the Galactic Bus [1988] and The Snake Oil Wars [1989]). It seems
he had had a pleasure for writing criticisms of modern life and history. I’m
not sure if there is anything else in his bibliography which beckons my
readership, but one may still catch my eye.